ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Foreign Office said on Thursday Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s most recent remarks “weaponizing” the waters of the Indus river were against international norms and exposed the “stark contrast” between India’s conduct in the region and its declared global ambitions.
Modi on Tuesday upped the rhetoric in a standoff over water access triggered by a deadly attack in Indian-administered Kashmir in April in which 26 tourists were killed. New Delhi said Islamabad was behind the attack — a charge it denies — and announced a raft of punitive measures including unilaterally suspending the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty.
Any move to stop Pakistan accessing the water would have a devastating impact. The Indus treaty, negotiated by the World Bank in 1960, guarantees water for 80 percent of Pakistan’s farms from three rivers that flow from India.
The nuclear-armed neighbors have already clashed in their worst military fighting in nearly three decades before agreeing to a ceasefire on May 10.
“His [Modi] references to weaponizing water, a shared, treaty-bound resource, reflect a troubling departure from international norms and a stark contrast between India’s conduct in the region and its declared global ambitions,” the foreign office said in a statement.
“Pakistan urges India to return to the core principles of international order including respect for sovereign rights of others and its treaty obligations, as well as restraint in both language and action.”
The foreign office said such “jingoism” by Modi would undermine long-term peace and stability.
“India’s youth, often the first casualty of chauvinistic nationalism, would do well to reject the politics of fear and instead work toward a future defined by dignity, reason, and regional cooperation.”
Modi on Tuesday amplified the resolve to use water from the Indus river system for India, saying provisions of the “badly negotiated” Indus Waters Treaty were prejudicial to the interests of the country and did not even let it use the waters earmarked for it.
Calling out “decades of silence” over the treaty, he said it had left Indian-administered Kashmir’s dams clogged and crippled.
Pakistan’s Attorney General, Mansoor Usman Awan, said earlier this month India had written to Pakistan in recent weeks citing population growth and clean energy needs as reasons to modify the treaty. But he said any discussions would have to take place under the terms of the treaty.
Islamabad maintains the treaty is legally binding and no party can unilaterally suspend it, Awan said.
“As far as Pakistan is concerned, the treaty is very much operational, functional, and anything which India does, it does at its own cost and peril as far as the building of any hydroelectric power projects are concerned,” Awan told Reuters.
India and Pakistan have shared a troubled relationship since they were carved out of British India in 1947, and have fought three wars, two of them over the Himalayan region of Kashmir, which they both claim in full but rule in part.
India accuses Islamabad of backing separatists in Kashmir, a claim it denies, in turn accusing New Delhi of backing separatist and other insurgents in Pakistan.
